This invention involves the processing of documents and electronic data which are generated, for example, from sale, business and banking transactions including credit card transactions, smart card transactions, automated teller machine (ATM) transactions, consumer purchases, business forms, W2 forms, birth certificates, deeds and insurance documents.
The enormous number of paper and electronic records generated from documents and electronic data from sale, business and banking transactions contain valuable information. First, these paper and electronic records contain information which can be used to verify the accuracy of the records maintained by consumers, merchants and bankers. For example, customers use paper receipts of sale and banking transactions to verify the information on the periodic statements which they receive from their bank or credit card institution. Merchants use paper receipts to record sale transactions for management of customer complaints. Taxpayers use paper receipts to record tax deductible contributions for use in their tax return preparation. Employees use paper receipts to record business expenses for preparation of business expense forms.
Paper and electronic records also contain information which can be used for market analysis. For example, manufacturers and retailers can determine consumer preferences in different regions as well as trends in consumer preferences from the information contained in paper and electronic records.
However, the maintenance and processing of paper and electronic records presents difficult challenges. First, paper receipts and documents could easily be lost, misplaced, stolen, damaged or destroyed. Further, the information contained in these paper and electronic records cannot be easily processed because it is scattered among individual records. For example, the market trend information contained in a group of sales records retained by merchants cannot easily be determined since this information is scattered among the individual records. Likewise, the tax information contained in a group of paper receipts of sales transactions retained by consumers cannot easily be processed.
Previous approaches have been proposed to meet the challenges associated with the maintenance and processing of paper and electronic records. For example, data archive service companies store the information from paper receipts and documents acquired from their customers on microfilm or compact disc read only memory (CD-ROM) at a central facility. Customers typically deliver the paper receipts and documents to the central facility. For sensitive documents which cannot leave the customer site, some data archive service companies perform data acquisition and transfer to magnetic tapes at the customer site and deliver the tapes to the central facility.
The approach offered by these data archive service companies have disadvantages. First, the approach is costly and has poor performance because it requires an expensive, time consuming physical transportation of paper receipts or magnetic tapes from the customer site to the central facility. Further, the approach is not reliable as information can be lost or damaged during physical transportation. The approach also has limited capability as it does not process electronic records along with the paper receipts within a single system.
Other approaches have focused on the elimination of paper receipts and documents. U.S. Pat. No. 5,590,038 discloses a universal electronic transaction card (UET card) or smart card which stores transaction information on a memory embedded on the card as a substitute for a paper receipt. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,479,510 discloses a method of electronically transmitting and storing purchaser information at the time of purchase which is read at a later time to ensure that the purchased goods or services are delivered to the correct person.
While these approaches avoid the problems associated with paper receipts, they have other disadvantages. First, these approaches do not offer independent verification of the accuracy of the records maintained by consumers, merchants and bankers with a third party recipient of the transaction data. For example, if a UET card is lost, stolen, damaged or deliberately altered by an unscrupulous holder after recording sale or banking transactions, these approaches would not be able to verify the remaining records which are maintained by the other parties to the transactions.
Next, these approaches do not have the ability to process both paper and electronic records of transactions within a single, comprehensive system. Accordingly, they do not address the task of processing the enormous number of paper receipts which have been generated from sales and banking transactions. The absence of the ability to process both paper and electronic records of these approaches is a significant limitation as paper receipts and documents will continue to be generated for the foreseeable future because of concerns over the reliability and security of electronic transactions and the familiarity of consumers and merchants with paper receipts.
These approaches also have a security deficiency as they do not offer signature verification which is typically used on credit card purchases to avoid theft and fraud. For example, a thief could misappropriate money from a UET card holder after obtaining by force, manipulation or theft the user's personal identification number (PIN). Similarly, it is not uncommon for criminals to acquire credit cards in victims' names and make unlawful charges after obtaining the victim's social security number. This becomes a greater concern as that type of personal information becomes available, e.g., on the internet. Also, the signature verification performed manually by merchants for credit card purchases frequently misses forged signatures.
Even if smart cards or UET cards had the ability to store signature and other biometric data within the card for verification, the system would still have disadvantages. First, the stored biometric data on the card could be altered by a card thief to defeat the security measure. Similarly, the biometric data could be corrupted if the card is damaged. Finally, the security measure would be costly at it would require an expensive biometric comparison feature either on each card or on equipment at each merchant site.
Additional biometric verification systems including signature verification systems have been proposed to address the security problem. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,657,393 discloses a method and apparatus for verification of hand-written signatures involving the extraction and comparison of signature characteristics including the length and angle of select component lines. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 5,602,933 discloses a method and apparatus for the verification of remotely acquired data with corresponding data stored at a central facility.
However, none of these verification systems offer general support for transaction initiation, remote paper and electronic data acquisition, data encryption, data communication, data archival, data retrieval, data mining, manipulation and analytic services. Accordingly, there is a need for a single system which offers comprehensive support for the tasks involved in the automated processing of documents, biometric and electronic data from sale, business, banking and general consumer transactions. Further, there is a need for a single comprehensive system having the reliability, performance, fault tolerance, capacity, cost and security to satisfy the requirements of the retail, business, banking and general consumer industries.